Hacker News Reader

Comment by CyanLite2 | Hacker News Reader

The power co's have a legal monopoly and in the vast majority of states the commission that regulates these utilities have members that are open bought-and-paid for by the utilities. Thus, they'll never realistically stand a chance unless someone came along with a bigger checkbook. There aren't many companies that want to get into the power business these days that have billions of dollars and the know-how to operate power plants and all the distribution to reach nearly every home.

However, this is ripe for disrupting like Uber did by skirting laws in many areas. Could it possibly be legal to 'provide' power and create a residential subdivision with a microgrid and the price is part of the sale of the house?

View on HN

Now that solar panels are trending down in price it seems IMHO the real disruption will be when batteries similarly become cheap enough that homeowners may disconnect completely from the grid or at least make solar the majority of their energy supply.

If that happens energy companies will at that point be lobbying to force endusers to stay on grid to continue subsidizing maintenance.

We aren't at that tipping point yet but with large tax breaks coming for EV ownership, an EV vehicle also makes a great way to dump "excess" solar power. Enough so that gas stations will start disappearing over the next few decades as well. Again, IMHO.

If batteries get cheap enough it might make sense for an entrepreneur to sell or lease solar+battery+charger to people who want to sublet part of their property, crowd sourcing EV charging.

>Now that solar panels are trending down in price it seems IMHO the real disruption will be when batteries similarly become cheap enough that homeowners may disconnect completely from the grid or at least make solar the majority of their energy supply.

I think we're there now. You can get "server-rack" LiFePO4 batteries for about $1500 for a 5kWh battery. You can probably get solar, inverters, and 30kWh of batteries for about $25,000 and this should last maybe a few days for most homes. Mini-splits instead of central HVACs reduce power consumption a good bit, and have better energy efficiencies.

In many cases (and more by the day as companies lobby for it) it’s actually illegal for homeowners to be disconnected from the grid.

I mention it here because it’s important to watch out for these types of laws and vote as neccessary

It is possible you could get away with that in some places, but everywhere I've lived in the US, it is illegal to sell electricity to your neighbors. The only way around it I've seen is to give it away for free, but it is hard to build a scalable business around that.

You could always structure it like http://duuber.com/ If it works for drug dealers, perhaps it can work for electricity? :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com